Mouse In The House

Since my humiliation obviously knows no bounds,

and since my husband said he'd hijack my blog in the middle of the night and post this anyway,

I'm sharing a short little video from Awana last night.

We have a short little Minute to Win It (there is some TV show like this or something?) during the opening each week, and once a month two of the leaders are selected. Guess who got selected this week?

Our game was called Mouse in the House. The name will be obvious.



That's Vaseline keeping it on. I still feel like it's oozing out my nasal pores today.

Acronyms

My cousin Jennifer, who is really a nice girl even if she did throw sharp-pointed scissors at me once when we were teenagers, brought up the nickname she used to call me in the comments of my birthday post. It wasn't really a flattering nickname, it was identified by an acronym, but she's still a really nice girl. I promise.

And it's really no wonder that I have had hair issues my entire life.

If I could digress for just a minute though, right after this acronym comment, Hubby and I were out driving, picking up my Dairy Queen birthday cake and the Little Caeser's pizza, and a lady didn't pull out quite appropriately. This is what transpired in our vehicle next.

Hubby: "Sometimes I think people are just trying to make me mad. She's a BDC."

Me: "A Bad Driving Chick?"

Hubby: "Yes."

Me: "That's what you thought I was the other day."

Hubby: "No, I thought you were an SDC."

A few seconds of thought.

Me: "A Slow Driving Chick?"

Hubby: "Pretty soon you're going to be a GDC."

A few more seconds of thought.

Me: "A Granny Driving Chick?"

Hubby: "A Granny Driving Chick!"

Hubby couldn't remember what the acronym CBFH stood for that Jennifer used to call me either, and I reminded him a year or two ago when it came up between us the last time. I'm not so sure I want to put it here for posterity, but I'm also pretty sure I've embarrassed myself worse.

Cotton Ball Frizz Head.

Food in my Food

I'm ruining my reputation in one fell swoop.

It took so long to build it up, and in one measly meal, it's gone.

Maybe I'll blame it on Laura, The Organizing Junkie, for having this in her meal plan several weeks ago. I think that sounds like a good plan.

Here's a picture of the culprit before I ate it at dinner last night, touching, all at the same time.

It's called 5-Minute Southwest Layered Salad. It took Hubby and me a little more than five minutes to assemble all six plates, but not too many more than that.

It could have also been that I was over at the other counter part of the time making the Pioneer Woman's Shortbread Cookies. You know, just in case dinner didn't work out.

I have to be honest, as we were assembling these, I got second thoughts about this. Third and fourth thoughts, too. It has salsa and ranch dressing on it. Both! Not to mention black beans and corn. Together at the same time.

But by golly, I was going to have to take a big girl pill and eat some of this if I expected my kids to do it. They were watching me pretty closely out of the corners of their eyes wondering about me. Either that or I was a little paranoid with worry.

I didn't mess around and dug right in. My first comment: "This is surprisingly good." And it was. You know what's even better — everyone liked it! And even though it took a little more than five minutes, it was really very quick. We will definitely have this again.

It's meatless, too.

Just in case any of you out there are watching to see if this food in my food becomes a habit (Hubby, Mom, kids, Uncle John), don't count on it.

THE LAST BOX!!!

If I could insert a drumroll here, I would. So imagine a drumroll, please.

I have officially opened and emptied the last box following the move to our new house that we closed on on November 14, 2008.

When I was packing the boxes and working on 4 hours sleep in a 72 hour period, there were times I would tape up the box and forget what I'd just put in it. This one almost turned out that way, with the 'I think' comment in parenthesis.

In case you can't read that, here it is up close:

This box had three shoebox-sized Sterilite boxes in it, and one 2-gallon Ziploc with the toys in it. I used a lot of 1- and 2-gallon Ziploc bags inside the boxes to move smaller items and keep them contained. And yes, I keep my kids' teeth. I don't know why. Ask me in a few years.

I popped open the box of old photos that were pre-kid, and with the exception of a couple thrown on the top, that's exactly what they were. Some of them made me reminisce, and some of them made me laugh, so I thought I'd share a few with you.

In December when I posted the three-part birth story for the girls (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3), I mentioned that we never took any pictures of me when I was pregnant, but that there was one somewhere from the day I got my braces off, which also happened to be the day I got put on bed rest (I got the call later in the day after all the doctors had conversed on the phone). That picture was in this box. You can't really tell I'm pregnant, but I do have some really big bangs.

I also found the picture from our first Christmas card after the girls were born and out of the hospital, so they were just over a year old. I cut the side off since it had their names on it.

I'm not going chronologically, so here is a picture from a military ball of some type, probably the Christmas one, when we were at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, affectionately known to many of us as Fort Lost-in-the-Woods. This was probably somewhere around 1990 or 1991. I'd have to think too hard to do better than that.

This next picture is of our first cat, Cherokee. We got him about six months after we got married. He could be asleep in another room and wake up when he heard a banana being peeled. He loved them. He also loved spaghetti-o's. We also did not have a quality camera.

About a year and a half later we got him a friend. You know, so he wouldn't be lonely while we were in class. So now meet our second cat, Theodore.

Those two boys were best buds!

I will probably regret showing these next two pictures for the rest of my life, but I'm going to do it anyway. The first one is my very big hair, complete with very big bangs, my last year of college. I was working at the time on Christmas break in my aunt's children's clothing store when this picture was taken. Oh, and I even had a perm in my very naturally curly hair just to make it curlier and bigger. It was 1987. The glasses could have been a giveaway too.

During college after Hubby and I got married, he got me watching wrestling on TV. Now it was nothing like you see on TV today. I mean, it was real and everything. Oh, I'm kidding. But we did see one guy hit another guy with a chair once and it actually dented the chair. So one night we went with two other friends to Little Rock and sat in the second row to watch the wrestling matches, and to top it off, it was Fan Appreciation Night! Woo Hoo! So Hubby took pictures of me with the wrestlers as we went down the line and got autographs. Look at me in my floweredy jeans with Dr. Death. Cute, huh?

I guess if that's the most embarassing photo I own I'm doing pretty good, especially in this day and age with all that's out there.

And to think that this started as a post about finally being unpacked.

Senior Pictures Anyone?

It's Monday, and I should be doing a post about Menu Plan Monday and posting it over on The Organizing Junkie's website. But instead, I'm going to do something utterly silly that I found over on Mari's blog last night. I wasn't sure I was brave enough to do it. There's a little bit of humiliation involved here. But if I can tell everyone I've eaten cottage cheese and potato chips together, but yet I eat one thing at a time and don't let my foods touch, I have to re-launder everything that touches the floor as it comes out of the dryer, and I not only have to have the toilet paper come over the top but have to put it on the roller with the right hand, I think I've done a pretty good job so far in the humiliation category. So why not add a few pictures to it, right?

There's this website called Yearbook Yourself where you can create senior pictures of yourself in prior years from 1950 all the way to 2000, in every even numbered year. I made it more complicated than it should have been until I realized that you didn't have to import your picture every time you wanted to change to a different year. All you have to do is go down to the bottom and the years will scroll. Then you can click on each one, or just the one you want, and you can view it. If you save one along the way, just close that image out and you can start scrolling again. The kids and I had a blast playing with this today. They want me to do the cat and the picture of the bag of Ruffles next. We'll see.

1956

The Mary Tyler Moore Look

1968

The Marcia Brady Look

(aka the straight hair I always wanted)

1974

The Year I Graduated From High School

(not anything like my picture looked like)

1984

The Year I Graduated From College

(not anything like my picture looked, although at some point in the previous few years this could have been my picture)

1988

I had to show this because it could have been one of my pictures too, but again from years prior to this.

1990

The Year After I Had My Twin Girls

(I'd had this hair in prior years, although it was more "polished" because, hey, I was a professional with a "real" job.)

1994

I've decided by looking at these hairstyles that either Arkansas is a trendsetter, or high schools run behind the times, because I had all these hairstyles prior to the years they are dated. And by a good probably four years. But believe me when I say I had them, and if they were big, I had them BIG.

And because I don't want to only embarrass myself leave Hubby out of the fun, I'm going to show a couple of his. And he doesn't even know that the kids I did these.

1956
(I think I've seen some of Hubby's uncle's pictures that look like this)

1988

The year we graduated from college, which is the year Hubby's brother graduated from high school. This looks a lot like his brother's senior picture. By this time, Hubby's hair was pretty short since he was getting commissioned into the Army.

Well, if you go and play along at Yearbook Yourself, let me know so I can check your pictures out. I expect Heather and Reese to try it, because this kind of stuff is right up their alley. Was that a dare? No, I just want to see someone else humiliate entertain themselves too.